October 22, 2009

The Death of AstroCam 1.0

Well. I just reviewed the footage I shot last night, then hit the delete button on all of it. Even at 1600x1200 Jupiter through the 25mm Lens is about 100 pixels square. This wasn't the major problem, the thing that has caused me to lay AstroCam1 to rest is that I would be getting 1, maybe 2 frames in focus per 5 second video, then the camera would just lose it. I got some frames that showed the bands, were in reasonable focus, and Jupiter wasn't just a big bright lens flare, but that's just it, 1 or 2 frames per video.

The 640x480 video shot on the Lumix came out much better - still a bit bright, and Jupiter is blown out to all hell, but it was all shot through the 9mm lens, so I have way more pixels to work with and I am starting to get a real handle on how to shoot with the Lumix.

I went out and got AstroCam V2 this morning - cheaper, lower resolution and non auto focus - Logitech Quickcam for notebooks - expect a post on the disassembly and preparation soon.

So, things I learned:
Autofocus is evil
25mm Lens is too wide a fov for good webcam video
Set Lumix to Macro
ISO 80/100 gives best results for detail, even if the moons disappear